Twentysomething: Why Do Young Adults Seem Stuck?

Why do so many twentysomethings seeem to be taking so long to grow up? Why are they moving back home with college degrees and no prospects? What does it mean to be young today? Did helicopter parents raise an entitled generation? And how different are things, really, from the way they used to be? In the summer of 2010, the author wrote an article for the New York Times Magazine called "What is it About 20-Somethings?" It generated enormous reader response and started a conversation that included both millennials and baby boomers. Now, working with her millennial daughter Samantha, she expands the project to give us a full portrait of what it means to be in your twenties today. Looking through many lenses, they ask whether emerging adulthood has truly become a new rite of passage. They examine the latest neuroscience and psychological research, the financial pressures young people face now, changing cultural expectations, the after effects of helicopter parenting, and the changes that have arisen from social media and all things Internet. Combing trhough the scientific research they find that while some things, like social media have changed the way twenty-somethings live; in other ways being young has always been like this. Moving back home with Mom and Dad, for instance, is not unique to kids today. Neither is making important life choices, although the number of choices today is unprecedented, and can be paralyzing. Most important, they have surveyed more than 120 millennials and baby boomers to give voice to both viewpoints of a conversation that is usually one-sided. This is a book about being young in our time written with insight into this disconcerting stage when young people have to start closing some doors after growing up with the mantra to keep all their options open.